Your Missed Chance
by tami3
Summary: Joining the Black Order means a lot of lost opportunities. Lenalee misses her chance to be beautiful. As for Komui, "he had never thought anything could make him wish he had broken every bone in Lenalee’s feet when he had had the chance." Kanda later.


-1Your Missed Chance

Komui would have never wished an early death on his parents--Gods no, all that proper Confucian training and the whole life-is-centered-on-the-family thing never setting in? His tutors would have had the rod on his rear.

But they had done it the absolute best time: before Lenalee's fifth birthday. After the funeral procession, Komui had left behind the screeching band of hired mourners, stripped off his white mourning garb while crossing the threshold, and swung Lenalee up into the air, kissing her perfect little feet. He felt her toes curl up in reaction against his lips and her baby nails scraping against skin as the servants peeked through the fragrant jasmine bushes at her outraged cries.

His parents had been crazy, and since you couldn't fix craziness, then, well, their deaths had helped alleviate the problem. Lenalee, not beautiful enough for a noble woman just because they hadn't snapped her feet in two and bent them over backwards? Every time Komui looked down at her round face, her features already set in trained reproach, he got drunk with admiration. His parents hadn't felt that, how?

Crazy.

His uncles visited and exclaimed over Lenalee --silken hair! White skin, radiant like a water lily, the prettiest manners and such utter respect for the head male of the household! (Komui.) "Ni de mei mei shi hen piao lang!"

_Your little sister is so beautiful!_

Only, only, why did she have such huge, grotesque, unbound feet? Their girls had already been trip-trapping delicately about their compounds for years, endowed with feather-footed grace.

They watched her dart and hop after butterflies in the garden in a manner that was utterly unfeminine and without charm. They said, she may be too young to think about it now, but when she's older Lenalee will hate you for keeping her ugly.

Thank god their daughters were already demure and dainty and struggling to hobble from point A to point B. That was what had the matchmakers already calling from the front gates. Husbands don't come easy to ugly girls, they warned. Make an appointment with the foot-binder soon.

Komui listened to his elders' advice with the utmost reverence as befitted a filial son of the ancient Lee family. As soon as night fell he packed all of his books in a bag, a good deal of money in a purse, and a sleepy Lenalee snatched from her bed in a sling.

Holding her soft hand and listening to her squeal excitedly as they rode the junket up the bay, Komui wished his uncles all the happiness and prosperity in the world with his parent's estate, which he had left in their care. For the letter, he had even used his best calligraphy, which had on occasion had made his tutors weep from its elegance.

After all, he was extremely grateful that they had reminded him that the customary-arranged-marriage problem had required drastic fixing.

With a well-forged letter of recommendation from one of his ranking relative officials in the Forbidden City, Komui managed a respectable clerk position for himself. Special favors were always touch-and-go like that, and luckily the Lee family name carried much weight in the perfectly copied signature. (Komui had been able to ape the style for years, what with his proud father insisting that his son take inspiration from scrolls penned by relatives famous for their calligraphy.)

And so Komui began being father to Lenalee for real, planning her meals and taking responsibility for her developing mind. He dreamed happily over the future he had for her. It would be so simple and so great and so bright. All he had to do was rigorously drill Lenalee in classical Confucian texts until she was grown, and then she could take the civil service exam.

Never mind that reading and writing were forbidden by law for women. He had a solution for that.

All Lenalee had to do was cross-dress for the rest of her life. Plenty of the powerful men in Bei Jing were eunuchs, anyways. Adult men with softly-angled faces and high voices were practically ubiquitous at court. As long as Lenalee grew tall enough, none would be the wiser. As lovely as she was, Komui reasoned that she could get away with merely having a particularly womanly brand of androgyny--he'd seen worse of some of male prostitutes of the city.

Komui fed her plenty of nourishing beef and pork, waving aside her irritated, high-pitched insistence: "Gege, wo bu xiang chi rou! Wo bu xi huan!"

_Big brother, I don't want to eat meat! I don't like it!_

He got her to clean her bowl in grumpy acquiescence with the explanation that she needed it like she needed medicine. She had utter faith in her brother's desire for her well-being.

Komui worked himself on his studies. He had a fantasy that they would pass at the same time and would enter the government together--prodigy as he was, he wouldn't mind being a little older than most new officials. He was confident that he would rise in rank more swiftly than any of them, so there would be no time or opportunity lost. And then his darling (no, brilliant. He had to start thinking that Lenalee as brilliant, not

darling) sibling would be by his side at all times, ascending similarly.

They would live together, and it would only be at night that Lenalee would switch to soft-colored and more form-fitting women's gowns. He would be the only one to ever see her in them. It would be a tremendously funny inside joke that would bring them even closer.

Lenalee would never, ever have to marry and depend on a man to be something in the world. She would be literate and able to walk. She wouldn't pitifully shuffle along, which was supposedly the mark of attractive high-ranking women (Objects of great beauty and great stupidity, Komui thought contemptuously.) Lenalee would stride confidently, as was natural to one accomplished and learned (as a real person!).

Yes. He was sure Lenalee would like that. The sentiment practically radiated within his heart when he watched Lenalee at play. His very soul felt glad for the feet that let her jump and run. And one day, they would carry her into glory. So what if she would technically be an "ugly woman" ? What really mattered was that she would make an outstanding man.

Thank god, thank god, thank god that their parents had died when she was so young. Even though it would have taken years to shrink them to the desired four inches, if Lenalee's feet had been wrapped with bandages even once, it all would have been useless.

Anyone would be able to tell with one glance what she really was, not matter how impeccably male her garments. Releasing her feet half-way through wouldn't have fixed her shattered bones. It wouldn't have reset the disfigured shape of curled-under bird claws.

And so Komui passed a few years adoring his sister and adoring his projected future for her and adoring her intact feet. It might have been his imagination, or their normal size symbolizing the freedom he had secured for her, but sometimes he fancied Lenalee's pretty feet even more wonderful than her face. So whenever he could catch her in a moment's inattention, he would take off her shoes and kiss them bare to the same squirming and kicking and complaining.

He never imagined that one day he would be approached by an organization that filled its positions even greater selectivity than the Chinese government. He never would have thought their plans for Lenalee could be even more grandiose than his own. And certainly, he hadn't fathomed someone else being even more interested in Lenalee's feet than himself.

And of course, he had never thought anything could make him wish he had broken every bone in Lenalee's feet when he had had the chance.

A/N: Sorry for the (bad) history lesson…? Summarizing the cultural references, the Chinese government had a meritocracy in which the only way you could enter civil service was by passing exhausting tests that lasted for days. They commonly took years to study for, so sons of upper class families started early. Reflecting societal values, they mostly focused on Confucian ideas. Having beautiful handwriting also counted.

Noblewomen were forbidden by law to read or write and were practically confined to their family homes after marriage. They also had their feet bound at a young age; normally sized feet were considered coarse and ugly.

There were eunuchs controlling things in Bei Jing, but um, as I'm basing that on their height of power during the Ming dynasty (which is NOT the right time…) I might be wrong about that…I apologize if I am…they still existed during this time, but I'm not sure in what numbers… but yeah, the idea was that they couldn't have children, so their family line wouldn't threaten imperial power. They got around that through adoption.

And yes, Komui be creepy. That is his love.


End file.
